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Is that a deep red leaf painted onto the stage of the Tom Patterson Theatre in Stratford, Ont. … or is that what I think it is?

In Jillian Keiley’s production of Bakkhai (otherwise known as Euripides’ The Bacchae), using the 2015 version adapted by Canadian poet Anne Carson, the double meaning of Shawn Kerwin’s set as both a representation of nature as well as female sexuality instantly demonstrates the director’s approach to this classic Greek tragedy. It transforms these two elements into one and the same: organic, primal, brutal if it needs to be. They are forever under the attempted control of man or mankind (this is a blazingly contemporary play, if not only for its discussion of sexual politics but also for the way man’s relationship to global warming is still somehow considered a debate).

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There’s a reason why Dionysos holds his Bacchanalian rituals on mountaintops, uses a thyrsus staff of ivy and pine cones, and encourages his followers to drape themselves in grapevines. He also orchestrates the climax of Bakkhai to occur among the trees of Mount Cithaeron, bringing the doomed King Pentheus from the protection of the city and quite deliberately out of his element, into the elements.

This Bakkhai is a battle of ego between two men of different kinds of power (political and divine), and the true villain in this production, uninhibited in colour, sound, movement and emotional extremes, is hubris. King Pentheus (Gordon S. Miller, who gives a captivatingly fragile and tender performance as a man whose identity is built on inherited and unquestioned authority), meets his downfall by arresting the women who escape their homes in Thebes to join the Bakkhai in the mountain. He dismisses Dionysos (Mac Fyfe) as a worthwhile adversary. Dionysos himself acts out of insult, using the women of Thebes, and eventually Pentheus’s own mother Agave (Lucy Peacock) in the play’s most devastating action, to exact revenge for those who doubt his immortality. He’s ultimately victorious because of his status as a daimon (half mortal, half God), but no less wicked in his motivations, as much as he promulgates ecstasy, joy and pleasure within his followers.

Fyfe, an inspired bit of casting, is captivatingly ethereal and physically androgynous — his wig of long, brown hair flows and curls as freely as his movements. His Dionysos is as confident as Miller’s Pentheus is insecure, and as sexually intoxicating as his opponent is impotent (in a brilliant piece of stage action involving an iPad and a blurred Internet video). This Dionysos wins the audience’s favour until the malice of his plan unfolds, devastating a city and a family. Peacock’s final moments on stage, careening from hysterical joy from the “hunt” to existential and emotional terror, show who the collateral damage in the duel between King and God is. And Agave’s journey — symbolized by her joyfully drunken toss of her high-heeled shoes offstage to start, and ending with a slow and pained ensemble of every kind of tight, constrictive undergarment (which, in all likelihood, hit home with the well-dressed women at the show’s opening night) — reveals the gold mine of expression that lies within Peacock when she’s unleashed to reach her gritty, gnarly depths.

If hubris is the villain in Bakkhai, then community is the saviour. Indeed, it keeps André Morin’s servant — only seen respectfully following orders, without condoning or spurning Pentheus’s ego-driven acts — safe as he witnesses the murder of his King, and retells the story with appropriate horror and revulsion (an impactful if brief performance, which drew applause on opening night).

But the beauty of community and mutual love is best seen within the Backkhai themselves, the followers of Dionysos — Sarah Afful, Jasmine Chen, Laura Condlln, Rosemary Dunsmore, Quelemia Sparrow, Diana Tso, and Bahia Watson. As the soul of the production, the Bakkhai are self-possessed in their lives, free in their sexual pleasure, and devoted not to themselves, but to each other and to a higher cause. In intricately choreographed choral numbers, they act as a single unit — but the cast don’t sound like they’re in Guys and Dolls; they’re not otherworldly nymphs with perfect voices. These songs have an organic, true-to-life sound, as if these are women who have reached a higher plane simply by accepting and enjoying their sensual sides, respectfully, by themselves and with each other. (This production practises what it preaches, enlisting intimacy choreographer Tonia Sina to keep these moments safe and consensual.)

Explicitly, Bakkhai is about the danger of denying our natural impulses and believing civilized society to be superior to our baser selves. On another level, it’s about the control of women’s sexuality and sense of agency. But in 2017, in an atmosphere of isolation and social media bubbles, where it is easy to place too much stock in one’s own opinion, status, or sense of correctness, Bakkhai is also a reminder to place yourself in the context of the rest of the world — people, nature, deific energies or the lack thereof (depending on your beliefs). And that context is full of grey area and hypocrisies, as Keiley’s direction and Carson’s adaptation make clear. But, to trust Bakkhai, we’re all in this together — and that’s a divine realization.

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